Barriers To Worship #3
A Reluctance Toward Surrender
Then Jesus said to his disciples, Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Matthew 16:24
The Greek word for worship is Proskuneo – it’s where we get our English word prostrate. We are called to prostrate ourselves before God. It is not groveling for acceptance—rather acknowledging His worthiness.
The number one thing our Lord is looking for in His creatures is humility. Tyrone Edwards says, Humility is not an abject, groveling, self-despising spirit—it is but a right estimate of our selves as God sees us. For me this represents kind of a full circle—as we bow down in humility, He allows us to see ourselves through His eyes.
Ever since the great fall of man, we have been insecure and looking for ways to be affirmed—without that affirmation from God, we look for it in all the wrong ways; and our pride keeps us in that mode. It is especially difficult for us men to surrender—we do not like to admit that we need help, so we stubbornly dig in our heels. I have found that my proximity to God is in direct proportion to my distance from Vince. The more it’s about me—the less it is about Him!
Read and meditate on this devotional from Oswald Chambers:
John 1:48 When you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
We presume that we would be ready for battle if confronted with a great crisis, but it is not the crisis that builds something within us — it simply reveals what we are made of already. Do you find yourself saying, “If God calls me to battle, of course I will rise to the occasion”? Yet you won't rise to the occasion unless you have done so on God's training ground. If you are not doing the task that is closest to you now, which God has engineered into your life, when the crisis comes, instead of being fit for battle, you will be revealed as being unfit. Crises always reveal a person's true character.
A private relationship of worshiping God is the greatest essential element of spiritual fitness. The time will come, as Nathanael experienced in this passage, that a private “fig-tree” life will no longer be possible. Everything will be out in the open, and you will find yourself to be of no value there if you have not been worshiping in everyday occasions in your own home. If your worship is right in your private relationship with God, then when He sets you free, you will be ready. It is in the unseen life, which only God saw, that you have become perfectly fit. And when the strain of the crisis comes, you can be relied upon by God.
Are you saying, “But I can't be expected to live a sanctified life in my present circumstances; I have no time for prayer or Bible study right now; besides, my opportunity for battle hasn't come yet, but when it does, of course I will be ready”? No, you will not. If you have not been worshiping in everyday occasions, when you get involved in God's work, you will not only be useless yourself but also a hindrance to those around you. God's training ground, where the missionary weapons are found, is the hidden, personal, worshiping life of the saint.
-Oswald Chambers
I want to close with some practical ideas on starting a daily routine for worship:
- Sanctify a place in your home or wherever you can go daily for a quiet and private time. Pray over it and ask God to bless it and let Him know you are excited to meet Him there every day.
- Build an altar—in the Bible we see Abraham building altars to His Lord everywhere he went. He used rocks, which represent the hard places in our lives. Bring your hard places before Him.
- Determine to worship there every day.
- Begin by praising Him and giving thanks
- Put on some praise music and worship Him with words and song—Paul and Silas did that and the very foundations of their captivity was shaken.
- Spend time just being quiet and ask Him to speak.
My friend Dick Eastman writes about what he calls Intercessory Worship. He would remind us that the maximum power flow in prayer happens on the heels of our humble worship.
My final encouragement for you is to be desperate for God.
One day a student went to his master and asked, how can I find God? the master asked the young man to follow him and he brought him to a river. After walking into chest deep water, he asked the student to go under the water and hold his breath for as long as he could. He did.
About the time the student started to stand the master put his hand on his head and would not let him up. The young man began to squirm and struggle and, at just about the time he would turn blue, the master released him. He shot up, took a deep breath and asked, WHY DID YOU DO THAT? The master replied, SON, WHEN YOU ARE AS DESPERATE FOR GOD AS YOU WERE FOR THAT BREATH OF AIR—YOU’LL FIND HIM!
Rediscover Worship
The teaching below from Vince D’Acchioli encapsulates our four-part series on Worship. Please Enjoy this brief video teaching